Dr. William F. Keegan

Dr William F. Keegan in Haiti, 1996.

is Chairman and Curator of Anthropology,
Department of Natural History, Florida Museum of Natural History. He also
serves as Associate Director for Research and Collections. He holds affiliate
appointments as Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Latin American
Studies at the University of Florida. He is also affiliate faculty in
the College of Natural Resources and the Environment. He received his
Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Following
the completion of his Ph.D. he was the Visiting Scholar in North American
Prehistory at Southern Illinois University where he published the edited
volume, Emergent Horticultural Economies of the Eastern Woodlands.
He was Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of South
Carolina before moving to the Florida Museum of Natural History in 1987
to develop a research-based program in Caribbean Archaeology. He was appointed
Department Chair in 1994.

Keegan began investigating Caribbean prehistory in 1978 in the Turks and Caicos
Islands. In 1982 he initiated a systematic survey of the islands in the
Commonwealth of the Bahamas during which more than 1500 kilometers of Bahamian
coastline were surveyed and more than 150 prehistoric sites discovered. The most
recent discoveries are sites in the Turks Islands; islands previously viewed as
uninhabitable. He has participated in and directed archaeological excavations in
Haiti (1995-present), the Turks and Caicos Islands (1978-present), Bahamas
(1982-present), Grenada (1989, 1990), Grand Cayman (1993) and the Dominican
Republic (1999). His research has been supported by grants from the American
Philosophical Society, National Geographic Society, H. John Heinz III Charitable
Trust, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the United Nations
Development Program, and through the participation of EARTHWATCH volunteers. He
is Curator of the Bullen Research Library of Caribbean Archaeology and is
involved with the use of stable isotope analysis to investigate prehistoric
diets.

His interests range from the very specific investigation of Columbus' first
landfall to broad questions of cultural development and change. One goal has
been to demonstrate how understanding and explaining Caribbean prehistory is
important for investigators working in other island archipelagos. As a result,
his work has attracted international attention. He has published more than 40
scientific articles detailing his research. He was awarded (with co-author
Morgan Maclachlan) the Morton H. Fried Prize in 1989 for the best article in
general anthropology published in the American Anthropologist. He has
published two single-author books, Bahamian Archaeology: Life in the Bahamas
and Turks and Caicos Before Columbus (Media Publishing, 1997) and The
People Who Discovered Columbus: The Prehistory of the Bahamas (University
Press of Florida, 1992); and the edited book, Earliest Hispanic/Native
American Interactions in the Caribbean: A Sourcebook (Garland Press, 1991).
He is the Contributing Editor for the Caribbean Area to the Library of Congress'
Handbook of Latin American Studies and the Journal of Archaeological
Research. He serves on the Advisory Board of the HRAF Collection of
Archaeology.

He is a member of the Planning Committee for the Florida Museum's new Education
and Exhibition Center. He was a member of exhibit teams for FIRST ENCOUNTERS,
NEW WORLD HARVEST, and BETTER THAN GOLD -- traveling exhibits that illustrated
the early Spanish exploration and colonization of the Americas. WATERS AND
WATERWAYS is a component of the permanent exhibits being constructed in Powell
Hall. He also collaborated on TAINO VISIONS: PAST AND PRESENT with the Santa Fe
Gallery, Santa Fe Community College.